Looking for Quiet (Fanless) NAS

I have had Synology NAS products for many years serving solely as my music library. They have always been remote to my music room. A recent move and resulting change in my listening room dictates that I need my NAS in the music room, connected to my audio system switch. As I result, I'm looking for a dead-quiet NAS. I've come across the QNAP HS-453DX, which is fanless, can accept SSD drives of course , and has a nice form factor. Did a search here and looks like there were some positive comments but they are quite a few years old. While seemingly perfect, the HS-453DX is a bit pricey.

Does anyone have any other recommendations? Also interested in recent experience with the HS-453DX if I decide to go that way. I need 4TB, expandable; RAID. Storing music files only and able to run Minimserver. Pretty simple.

Thanks for any feedback.

I’ve used the ts-i410x before. Really nice. 

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-i410x

52 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I’ve used the ts-i410x before. Really nice. 

 

 

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-i410x

The ts-i410x looks nice and would work well most likely, but it is also a bit pricey. Oddly, in just the last few hours since I've been researching, the HS-453DX is "currently unavailable" at both Amazon & B&H. Wonder if it's now discontinued? I did another search and came up with a QNAP HS-264-8G, a 2 bay version I think. This looks similar enough and is selling for $589.00. https://store.qnap.com/hs-264-8g-us.html. This might do the trick as I can use Raid 1; I also do occasional multiple USB backup drives.

Having been an exclusive Synology user, how do I migrate the data from Synology to QNAP? Are they compatible?

2 hours ago, Afveep said:

how do I migrate the data from Synology to QNAP

Just copy and paste. 

You could replace the fan in the NAS with a Noctua or Blacknoise eLoop low noise fan. I have done this for almost 10 years of using NAS's in my listening room.

You lose about 50% of the air output but reduce fan noise by 90% so its a worthwhile tradeoff. In a summer or hot room your drives will run hotter, and potential lifecycle will be reduced, so that must be accounted for.

There are PC fans out there that only have 6-7db of noise, but still push a fair amount of air to cool things. Whisper quiet. The normal fan found in a NAS is a cheap type that is 25-30db or even louder.

10 hours ago, agisthos said:

You could replace the fan in the NAS with a Noctua or Blacknoise eLoop low noise fan. I have done this for almost 10 years of using NAS's in my listening room.

 

You lose about 50% of the air output but reduce fan noise by 90% so its a worthwhile tradeoff. In a summer or hot room your drives will run hotter, and potential lifecycle will be reduced, so that must be accounted for.

 

There are PC fans out there that only have 6-7db of noise, but still push a fair amount of air to cool things. Whisper quiet. The normal fan found in a NAS is a cheap type that is 25-30db or even louder.

Yep. I replaced a fanless server with one with such front and back (intake and outtake) low noise fans. It’s a very quiet, not noiseless, server. The fan noise isn’t perceptible unless you are right next to the server in a quiet environment. The server runs much cooler than the fanless one, which is a plus for several reasons. It also has minimal dust buildup, as the outtake fan pulls most of the dust that comes in - out. 

I don’t see any reason to go back to a fanless unit. 

On 6/29/2024 at 12:48 AM, Afveep said:

I did another search and came up with a QNAP HS-264-8G, a 2 bay version I think.

I have quite some experience with 3 different silent NAS models by Qnap: HS-453DX, HS-264 and TS-410e. If you plan to run mainly Minimserver on it, all the 3 variants would pretty much do the job. Main differences are CPU power, connectivity and number/size of bays. 

HS-453DX has an outdated and less powerful CPU so consider running roon on it with a big library or Plex with broad video streams or doing simultaneous surveillance tasks later might challenge this one. 

HS-264 and TS-410e are equally powerful and if you are fine with 2 SSD bars (4 or 8TB each) running in RAID1, I would go for the more affordable HS264. Do not see any point in having a fan, CPU and SSD temperature stay pretty much on the healthy side.